News

Sunday 8 November 2009

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Welcome back. You are listening to Radio TF2.

This appears to be a seminal time for TF2 with a number of important developments taking place.

After 15 years of refusal China finally agreed to accept TeamFortress as an official sport. Illegal TF2 clubs have been existing for more than a decade, but while those clubs were tolerated by the officials they were not allowed to have national championships or partake on international championships as delegates of their country.Valve spokesman Johnson declared that this was an important step in the history of TeamFortress as a real-life sport since its roots in the sports community back in the 80s and the first acceptance of TeamFortress as a sport by South Korea in 1994.While there are still other countries which have so far not accepted TeamFortress as a sport – among them Switzerland, Peru and several Arabian countries – China was the last of the large industrial nation to recognize the sport.

Not quite as important, but still noteworthy is another decision felt on the other side of the globe: The US Ministry of Gaming Affairs lowered the clearance of young people to partake on TeamFortress matches to the age of 12. The ministry explained that safety issues have been addressed significantly during this decade and safer weapon simulations and rocket- as well as sticky-jump-simulations have proven to be reliable enough to be handled by younger sports people. However, the ministry upholds its decision that TeamFortress as a real-life sport still is restricted to be performed in registered sport-clubs under the supervision of trained and certified coaches. Again, Valve congratulated the ministry to its decision.

But there are also news on TeamFortress’ virtual counterpart: Valve announced in its official blog that with an upcoming update TF2 will finally feature female models for all nine classes. However, first screenshots show the female and male Pyro models appear to be completely identical, so the question of the Pyro’s gender may remain unanswered.